I also think that to force people to subscribe to a law newspaper when there is nothing of interest or relevance in that newspaper besides notices of city meetings is hindering public notification.

Unless the city invests in their own printed newspaper the local area will not have a printed newspaper for the general population.

A thought regarding the archiving aspects: is it possible that the city could make an arrangement with the Ann Arbor District Library? The AADL has been taking on more and more archival tasks and its website and operation are much smoother and friendlier than the city website. I’d propose that the city have a more easily accessible council packet (it should be at the top level of the website, not something you have to search for) that could be mirrored in some way at the AADL. I’m not sure how that would operate and am not proposing that the city give up its own responsibility to maintain these records.

I do know someone who is not internet-friendly who read the printed agenda religiously every Sunday when it was in the Ann Arbor News. I’m uncomfortable with the views of people like Two Cents who would throw the responsibility of the city to be open and accessible to all back on the members of the public in all their diversity.

It just seems quite simple to me. There should be an announcement web page run by the city where they are required to post all meeting/public hearing announcements. If the information is not there then fault lies with the city. The public will have one guaranteed place where they know to look for this information.

A benefit is that packets and other meeting materials could also be linked to these announcements. Currently, the newspaper only prints the announcement not the meeting materials. It could be one stop shopping for the public.

I am envisioning something like the calendar system used for city council but use it for all meetings. However I think there would need to be a different format to layout the meeting announcements in a better manner. The current format of using one line with a title would be too vague.

The public has to take some responsibility for being informed; they can go to the city website to look for the information they want. To force the city government to publish the information somewhere else where hardly anyone will see it or benefit from it just seems inefficient. There is no practical purpose (besides that we legally have to) to pay money to publish in the Washtenaw Legal News or other location that is not well known to the general population. To continue doing that,, just because we legally have to when everyone knows that it does not justify “real”public notice, is just plain wrong in my opinion..

As we all know, the newspaper requirement was there before the web was created. We no longer have a newspaper. I say lets not make the city “publish” the announcements in places that are not effective (Detroit free press, etc.) and waste time and money. The purpose of the “publication” requirement is to give the public “notice” about upcoming meetings; going to an announcement page on the city webpage satisfies the purpose of public notification. With no effective printed newspaper in town, the requirement calling for a notice to be printed in a newspaper (when we don’t actually have one) is just a silly requirement now.

Change of habit is involved with these changing times, and if we are going to make people adapt to a new system, I say lets make the new system cost efficient for the city. If people want to know about city issues it makes sense to go to an official webpage listing all the issues/public hearings that previously would have been printed in the newspaper.

This could also be a major cost-saving strategy in this era of hard-pressed municipal budgets — and would also allow for the last-minute revision of agendas, with less worry about publication deadlines.